With the world touting for a potential covid-19 vaccine to be ready by next year, India will be vaccinating its 30 million frontline workers in the phirst phase of vaccination.
Among the 30 million people to be vaccinated, there will be 7 million doctors and paramedics and 20 million other frontline workers, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said on Tuesday.
“The country has the infrastructure already in place to vaccinate the 30 million. We have the cold chain, vials, syringes and everything,” Bhushan told Hindustan Times.
“If the present trials proceed according to plan and succeed, then the number of doses that would be available from January to July would be sufficient to immunise all those on the priority list,” Bhushan, who is the co-chair of the panel, said.
“The same precautions (against the disease) will have to be continued even after the Covid-19 vaccine is developed. We have to remain cautious… we have to test, treat and isolate for a good time. The requirement for this may gradually reduce over time, but there is no scope for relaxation,” HT quoted Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) chief Dr Balram Bhargava as saying.
Union Health Minister, Harsh Vardhan, during his recent interaction, said that a vaccine will most likely be ready by 2021.
The minister said that India’s leading covid-19 vaccine manufacturers, Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech, will soon start late stage clinical trials of intranasal covid-10 vaccines.
In other news related to covid-19, India has seen steady decline in covid-19 daily cases.